Ministers and top officials joked about ‘locking up’ travellers during Covid
James ChappleThe country’s top civil servant joked about "locking up" travellers in quarantine hotels during the pandemic, leaked WhatsApp messages reveal.
More than 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent and received by Covid-era health secretary Matt Hancock were handed over to The Telegraph newspaper by journalist Isabel Oakeshott.
Hancock provided Oakeshott the messages after commissioning her to ghost-write his account of his time in office, The Pandemic Diaries.
He has accused Oakeshott of a massive betrayal and breach of trust, but Oakeshott has defended passing on the messages, stating it was in the "overwhelming national interest" for the messages to be made public.
During one exchange in early February 2021, published on Thursday (2 March) by The Telegraph, Hancock messaged cabinet secretary Simon Case – the country’s most senior civil servant – to say: "We are giving big families all the suites and putting pop stars in the box rooms."
Case replied: "I just want to see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a Premier Inn shoe box."
A few days later, Case asked Hancock: "Any idea how many people we locked up in hotels yesterday?" to which Hancock replied: "None. But 149 chose to enter the country and are now in quarantine hotels due to their own free will!"
Case responded: "Hilarious."
The exchanges took place after the now infamous "Partygate" gatherings in Downing Street and Whitehall that resulted in former prime minister Boris Johnson and serving PM Rishi Sunak receiving fixed penalty notices for breaking Covid rules at the time.
The Hancock texts also show the then-health secretary messaging a story to Johnson about a man and a woman being fined £10,000 each for failing to quarantine upon their return from Dubai, to which Johnson replied: "Superb."
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